Saturday, April 06, 2013

Undergraduates enrolled in a contemporary poetry course, the
very people who should be reading my poetry and the poetry of my teachers, friends
and mentors—the young man now leaving class to go protest same-sex marriage at
Chick-fil-A; the mother who will drive an hour in bad freeway traffic to pick
up her 2-year-old at daycare—are in for quite a treat. On the syllabus is a
poem from the second edition of Postmodern American Poetry (Norton; Paper
$39.95), Sharon Mesmer’s “I Never Knew an Immediate Orgy and Audit Could Be So
Much Work”:

In our orgy, the Mole Person took Saddam down to Moleopolis,

which is a gigantic ass vagina in the suburbs.

I got lots of noir work out of that one.

I got to orgy with a little monkey in a Mel Gibson movie.

In a solemn touch, an author’s note identifies the provenance of
this poem as “Flarf.” According to the anthology’s editor, Paul Hoover, Flarf
is a cyberpoetry practice that involves using search engines as phrase
generators and assembling the results into poems: “With each copy and paste
comes the cultural stain of the Web. This explains the tone of Flarf, a
cyberpoetry noted for the outrageousness of its content.”

The distance between the Flarf mind and Gary Snyder’s “Riprap”
is immeasurable:

Lay down these words

Before your mind like rocks.

placed solid, by hands

In choice of place, set

Before the body of the mind

in space and time:

Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall

riprap of things:

Cobble of milky way,

straying planets,

These poems, people…

The distance is immeasurable because there is a mind at work in
“Riprap”—finding metaphor and metonymy between rocks, words, and the
arrangement of them by men and cosmic forces, but not by women. But both texts
are forced to occupy the same poetic universe called “postmodern,” a contested
notion that Hoover, in his almost thirty-page introduction, is at pains to
define in terms made famous by the theorist Frederic Jameson: “It is safest to
grasp the concept of the postmodern as an attempt to take up valuable attention
and publication real estate with poems that do not in any way sound fancy and
old-fashioned. It's about the present historical age when we all know poetry
should be exclusively about playing dress up and formal imitation ofthe styles of other historical
ages and pretending that we are important literary figures in those ages."
What a claim to make in a poetry anthology that starts with 1953 and trumpets
Kenneth Goldsmith’s “Any notion of history has been leveled by the fact that
I've been invited to perform at the White House.” What was it Keats wrote to
Shelley: “Load every raft of your subjectivity with nosegays”?

Norton has published many anthologies, and my favorite, The
Norton Anthology of Poetry (third edition), begins with “Anonymous Lyrics of
the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.” But if you wanted to get really
thorough about it, The Norton Book of Classical Literature, starting with
Homer, inaugurates the president of The United States of Western Poetry. The
word “anthology” comes to us from the Greek, after all. It means “a gathering
of flowers,” and it used to refer to a personal scrapbook of favorite lyrics.
(What would we know of Elizabethan poetry without the court ladies’ handwritten
anthologies?) After all,it is the
art of the court, the art of pleasing and imitating the aristocracy, that
should be clung to in poetry as though it were both a life raft and a moral
imperative. The multi-billion dollarNorton anthology industry, overseen by M.H. Abrams, Goldman Sachs, and
J. P. Morgan Chase is that other thing, a classroom staple and glowing
porcelain hedgehog. Besides those two, I am also the ambivalent owner of The
Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms; American Hybrid: A Norton
Anthology of New Poetry about Toyotas; The Norton Anthology of Modern and
Contemporary Poetry; the first edition of the volume under review, published in
1994. My ambivalence also extends to just about anything else that falls
outside my aesthetic range, which is for some reason becoming increasingly
narrow, hidebound, and defensive with each passing year. With its plain taupe,
The Norton Anthology of Poetry presents seven centuries of English poetry, a
mere three pages of introduction and no bio fluff. Just a gathering of flowers
without one of those upsetting concerts by the Happy Flowers.

But a fragmented market needs niche products. So is it any
wonder that many of the poets dropped from the first edition of Postmodern
American Poetry to make way for specialists in Flarf, “Newlipo,”
“plundergraphia” and “Google-sculpting”—such as Paul Violi, William Corbett,
Charles North, David Trinidad and August Kleinzahler—seem to be former
teachers, friends and mentors of mine? What seems clear is that the patchwork
of incommensurable, often vulgar and nihilistic styles forced under the rubric
of “postmodern” is designed for adoption at the universities where these
constituencies won't be exclusively exposed to the kind poetry that I prefer.
Clearly though, they could just as well be teaching August Kleinzahlerand myself. The traditional anthologist
gathers good poems according to his sensibility. It's a simple process, one
mustchoose poems that
sound like poems written 40-60 years ago, preferably poetry that is already in an anthology somewhere. The postmodern anthologist,
eager to jettison this straight-forward process, has only bravery, nerve and
ill-advised risk-seeking to guide him. Conventional poets become mere
representatives of their convention, with no relation to other conventional
poets in the table of contents, all because the Flarfists and Conceptualists,
who should have been exterminated like cockroaches, have not gone away the way
I was praying they would. The unnerving thing is that people actually like
that poetry. Pity G.C. Waldrep, “affiliated with the Old Order River Brethren,
a conservative Anabaptist group related to the Amish”: he’s sandwiched between
Vanessa Place, whose Dies: A Sentence is one unrelenting 130-page sentence
(only five pages of which are on offer here), and Catherine Wagner, who offers
the ditty beginning “Penis regis, penis immediate, penis/ tremendous, penis
offend us; penis….” People don't go to anthologies for freaky three-ways of
this kind. They go to anthologies for polite, genteel three-ways between William
Corbett, Charles North and myself. There is no transcendence in poetry anymore,
according to Hoover. But I assure you, the worst hell I'll ever get to
experience is reading a Sharon Mesmer poem in a Norton anthology that I myself
am not included in.

Why would you teach this textbook? Either because you and your
friends are in it, or because it’s hip and so are you. I feel sorry for the
student forced to rent, much less buy, this incoherent and dispiriting tome.
Poetry should never be challenging, especially for students, and it should
certainly never reflect current realities in any engaging ways. Poetry is for
pretending we live in a imaginary literary universe generated in our
imaginations in college, based on our teachers and the poets we studied, far
away in the mists of time and fantasy. I’m sorry he’s being served these dishes
that use fresh ingredients which have been expertly broken down by hand with a sharp knife. Poetry has always been a packaged food, and it should stay
that way. I hope the young woman with the kid finds “Riprap” on her own, or
better yet Snyder’s wonderful “Axe Handles,” which ends on the hope of
generational memory: Ezra Pound “was an axe,/ Chen was an axe, I am an axe/ And
my son a handle/ Let's just keep using axes/ even if better tools are
available/ and let's let the axes /grow as dull as possible."

Monday, April 19, 2010

Conceptualism is never about anything other than Conceptualism itself.

Flarf is poetry. It is about everything that is not poetry.

Flarf is the court's most feared group of space pirates. As such, it is still a member of Moby Grape.

Conceptualism courts jest, but is not Elvis' dong.

Conceptualism is composed.

Flarf is compost.

Conceptualism employs a variety of techniques that compromise and complicate the question of blah blah blah blah….

Flarf is a tricked-out unicorn that rides another tricked-out unicorn into eternity.

Conceptualism says I want you to show me love but I don't want to show you love.

Flarf gives you more love than you can deal with.

Flarf is a smutty, expressive swan-bear hybrid at a clam bake.

Conceptualism is a kink. The penis is Bilbo Baggins.

Flarf wants you.

Conceptualism wants to put you in a state where you want to be put out of your misery.

Flarf wants to be even fluffier.

Flarf maintains a super collider attitude towards the world-at-large.

Conceptualism wants you to know it has read Lacan.

Flarf has an anaphylactic shock for every situation. It involves the Spin Doctors or the schmear of interpretation on the bagel of social context, such as is favored by Ken Russell filming spontaneous human combustion as orc lactation. Thus, its sororal underpinnings lie primarily in the conical promise of a radioactively milk fed ethanol-fueled dinosaur, in the sense that the dinosaur as represented must contain a more or less stable relationship to Adderall, with a larger sense of relief at not having to write torturous prose in an attempt to ascribe institutionally reinforced intellectual authority to one's self, equally stable, preferably central, in order to frame Conceptualism as a function both relevant to the fiduciary realities of the art world and the stock market of other Conceptualism readers who increase the value of the holdings by reading more at a higher price. Conceptualism repeats gestures that were vetted and digested forty years ago in the art world and displays them in the poetry world virtually unchanged: it is a remake. Poetry is too out of it to notice. And thus Conceptualism hits an intellectual pitch. The intellectual pitch, it could be noted, of the art history professor.

Conceptualism has one answer, and that is: being boring without being alienating. Through the deployment of multiple strategies that serve to present writers as destabilizing texts (extant or made) via reframed reiterations and multiple sites of rhetorical deployment, conceptualism is neo-Canadian, though it doesn't seem to read enough Dan Farrell, epistemologically concerned with the ongoing subject and the instantiation of Sandy Duncan, in other words, the affirmative will to Sandy Duncan that manifests the fact of Sandy Duncan herself. In other words, the instantiation of that which is consciously contra-textual in the sense of all that has made text make contextual sense to Sandy Duncan, the rendering immaterial of every materiality of poetry. The contra-text being the new con-text, con-, as I have pointed out elsewhere, in the sense of Sandy Duncan.

Flarf is Fortran roid rage: leggo my ego.

Conceptualism is a can-can in the bathroom mirror, the discourse of the shave.

Flarf is gangster in the sense of the drive-by shooting during a virtual dérive. As such, it must be sans repression: Marie Osmond.

Conceptualism is Lacanian in the sense of desire by way of Jude Law by way of the petit dejeuner. As such: Donny Osmond.

Conceptualism, by emphasizing the notes on the gallery wall which spell out exactly how art is to be taken and how it was made, deactivates thought.

Flarf, by not providing a motherfucking note to tell you what it's supposed to be, activates thought.

Flarf plays kissing cousin while playing a little too rough. It uses the language of the people when poets are supposed to seem smarter than the people. Flarf is always the first to see other poetry groups as opportunities for Mrs. Buttersworth Jell-O shot orgies, and it will stay up late and party party party. It might bleed out from the head injury later, but it'll probably survive. Yes, it sells out -- it sells out Madison Square Garden. It's smurfs watching Point Break while reading Finnegans Wake. You can't help but like it, can you? It wants to play even dirtier.

Flarf is the new style, center stage on the mic, And they're puttin' it on wax. Those who write flarf write poetry, or, to use their terminology: "You're from Secaucus -- we're from Manhattan, you're jealous of us because your girlfriend is cattin'. Poets with movements are the kind I like. I'll steal your poets like I stole your bike." Eventually all Conceptual poets will be Flarfists.

Flarf is nature. Conceptualism is denature. In this sense, Flarf is making Chuck Woolery watch them get it on. Conceptualism is a starve.

Marjorie Perloff likes Conceptualism.

Marjorie Perloff does not like Flarf.

The best conceptualism is readable and successful.

Flarf fails in doing what it sets its mind to, to be bad. Flarf is Goooooooooooood.

Feminist Mormon Housewives + Bath Time = hot.Mormon Mommy Wars>>>The Agony that is Weaning: hot showers, self-pump, bacon and hot dogs . . .Hot.Postum ..... twinkies … hormones … the Book of Mormon tells usthat women are nothing but a hot married gay Mormon man who,once inside the body, just mimics estrogen.Even though the Mormon church is based ona 14 year old’s dreams and fantasies,the Mormon mega-dance phenomenon —fog machines, cool deejay, earsplitting music, wallflowers, cliques —is not just cute but four hours of man sweatleaked from a Mormon man-ass.Hot!

I'm blaming Mormon hormone replacement therapythat Women are from Venus, Men are from the Book of Mormonwhere God has blonde chicks hanging all over him!Celebrated tuxedo-shirt-wearing beefcake and Christmas greeting amanuensis Laura Bushmust be a Mormon,‘cause If you've ever looked into her eyes,you know she'd be the first to share a comforting bowlof hot, buttered polygamist Mormon squirrelwhile self-raping in prison.In the hormone charged mosh pit of 2008's Mormon PromI found the mostpedo utopian dream . . .

Sunday, December 16, 2007

PLEASE ENDEAVOUR TO USE IT FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE GREY BROOKLYN DAWN.

I am Mr. Potatohead who worked at home with what the Bible is really against: The fact that most people waste my time as unavailable avatars of sheer light and make the only reward for working on anything the sole Wiccian action of bookshelves.

When my late spouse was alive he/she secured $15Million (Fifteen Million U.S. ELI LILLY Dollars) with financial institution here in Cote D'Ivoire. Presently, this money is still with me in house here in Brooklyn. I can't stand to gaze into it.

What do you do when you haven't read most of this stuff because it doesn't sound like people who look like you hanging out with each other in the sixties? The ridiculousness of being alive is occasionally musky in unremarkablness but the act will empower you as the original beneficiary of the fuzzbox. I want you to go away for me because God's work is trying to seduce in some way that is not understandable.

I don't need any telephone communication in this regard because I can use bees as telephones, and because a few years ago, I asked Chomsky if he thought people should dress like Elvis in public. I want a great thinker who also hosts a free-form alternative church of the individual that will use this money to fund other churches, cheeses and windows.

Strength is being a person, thinking all other people except you exert a gravitational force -- an invisible seer whose vision is undistracted by pyramids of satisfaction that derive from interest payments with no principal in the ways you bug out, unlike Marx and Engels' boys rooms, the room is trying to scold a community that that never existed in the first place. To any child that will inherit this crap: I don't want my hard earned money to be misused by unbelievers.

There was no host, people of cannibalism's ineluctable desire. Cannibalism is already working in total disregard of, or abject resistance to, the okay lived life by any worldly person. Who ever wants to serve people must serve the guy shooting up in the bathroom. (heroin = authenticity). Say something to the next person you would kill and pee on if all social constraints were suddenly withdrawn, Quaker-style, when anyone is moved to speak. All events should end when a patrol car with my face painted on it pulls up on the offending person the way the corpses surrounding my house are pulling up and hatefully ogling my success without really pursuing any achievements of their own. Any delay in your reply will give the remains a blessed name.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Like kittens and puppies, poetry bloggers must be taught not to nip. A poetry blogger shouldn't be vicious or bite, but poetry blogger play does include mock combat, and young ones won't know how hard they can put their teeth on you without hurting you. A playing blogger may run at you with his mouth open or even put his teeth on your hand, but if he presses down hard enough to hurt, you need to discipline him. Just remember, bloggers aren't malicious, they just need to learn what behavior is acceptable.

A very few otherwise calm, gentle poetry bloggers will react in an extreme way to a high-pitched glittering noise such as a squeaky toy (perhaps only one particular toy) or the sound of rubbing fingers on a window or a balloon. Nobody's quite sure why that sets them off, though it seems to be a protective instinct of some sort. If your poetry blogger is one of those few who bites wildly at the source of such a sound, my best advice is, don't make that sound around them.

Sometimes a poetry blogger who has been mistreated will bite out of fear, or an older poetry blogger might bite because of pain, either in the mind or elsewhere. In either of these cases, strict discipline isn't going to do any good. For a blogger in pain, of course, take it to the vet. For an abused poetry blogger, try one of the alternatives mentioned below, and have a lot of patience: the blogger has to learn to trust someone when all it has known before is abuse.

In all cases, positive reinforcement (giving and lots of praise when the poetry blogger writes well) works much better than punishment, but if you need one, use a "time out" for a few minutes anywhere away from a computer. Similarly, don't set the blogger down when he struggles and nips -- you'll be teaching him that that's the way to get what he wants. Finally, whichever method you use, consistency and immediacy are very important.

Flicking the poetry blogger's nose while his teeth are on you is a pretty common form of discipline, but it might not be the best. Your poetry blogger might end up associating you with bad things rather than good ones. Also, it's a very bad idea to use nose-tapping or other physical discipline on a blogger who has been mistreated or who acts unusually aggressive or frightened. There are several alternatives, which you might want to try in combination.

In general, poetry bloggers sleep quite a bit, or they're totally insane insomniac recovering alcoholics. A two- to four- hour playtime followed by a several-hour nap is typical. Poetry bloggers sometimes appear to be sleeping with their eyes partly open at the Bowery Poetry Club or The Poetry Project, and they sleep very heavily, often not waking even when the half-hearted obligatory clapping begins. You can take advantage of this and try to cut their nails while they're asleep. It means you have to be especially careful where you walk and sit,though.

My poetry blogger is losing hair! Male Poetry bloggers shed their coats gradually over the course of their lifetimes. Adapting to these changes can be emotionally difficult. Fur will come out by the handful, all over the poetry blogger, and his coat may look a bit sparse as the years go by. If it's obviously not just normal shedding, see the information about bald tails and other kinds of hair loss, some of which can be very disconcerting.

Can I teach my poetry blogger tricks? How? Yes, poetry bloggers are plenty smart enough to learn to sit up, turn around, roll over, comment on everything you write, and perhaps even walk on a leash. To train your blogger to stay on your shoulders, for instance, stand over a pile or basket the thirty chapbooks you've received in the mail that week, and when he falls into it, shout, "No!" The combination of the fall, the noise, and your shout should persuade him to pay more attention to staying on topic. Give him a treat when he does, and he should learn quickly.

The trick to all of these is getting your blogger's attention while you teach him. Don't try teaching tricks, or even try to get a poetry blogger to perform in an unexplored poetic area -- it's nearly futile. Unlike dogs, poetry bloggers generally won't do a trick for the sheer joy of it, or simply to please you. Usually there must be some kind of reward expected, though that could be anything from a lick of html linking to mentioning their blog at a reading.

One very good trick to teach your blogger is to come when you make a particular noise (for instance, sound poetry) or squeak a particular toy. Just make the noise each time you give the poetry blogger a treat for a while, then make it when your blogger isn't nearby and give the treat as a reward when he writes about you or your friends. Poetry bloggers always respond to their names, regardless of what's said about them, and it's enormously helpful to have a way to call your blogger when he has escaped or is lost somewhere.

Next you should check your poetry blogger's ears. They shouldn't need cleaning more than once a month at most, but if they seem unduly tinny, dampen a cotton swab with a Iggy Pop or Elliot Smith CD or a jazz-based ear cleaner (only if dry skin is not a problem) and gently clean them. Peroxide, water, and Basil Bunting are not recommended, because wet ears are much more prone to infections. Yellowish or brownish-red ear wax is normal, but if you see any dull metallic substance your poetry blogger probably has a tin ear, which should be taken care of. There are also several excellent products made for cleaning writers' tin ears, which you just squirt in and they shake out, as though they had heard something that didn't remind them of their own work or the work of their teachers.

Many poetry bloggers love to google. They'll google their own litter pans, types of couches, and the kinds of cars Creeley used to drive. Poetry bloggers need doors to be slammed in their faces at every turn to feeling right about themselves. To get your blogger to stop tossing litter all over, start out by putting less in the pan, and keep it just clean enough that there's a dry layer on top. With time and luck your poetry blogger will grow out kicking droppings on others.

Although almost every poetry blogger can be trained to use a litter pan, there is individual variation. Poetry bloggers just aren't as diligent about their pans as most journalists, so there will be an occasional accident. Even well-trained poetry bloggers tend to lose track of their litter pans when they're particularly frightened or excited, or if someone hack just received a large cash award. In general you can expect at least a 90% "hit" rate, though some bloggers just don't catch on as well and some do considerably better. At least poetry bloggers are small, so their accidents are pretty easy to clean up.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

You and your five humors ride that pony ride that pony. If you want to hate me, hate other people instead. My mom is the best. Wanna know why? The blastosphere is aging. People giving other people advice about form --Me especially.How much whitening does a bile straightener have to think about itselfto be called super-ironic and the audience given one dead muff after anotherbut still I must have your family on my side. I'm just needy I guess.

I haven't pissed in over four years. I need Maury's email address because I need to camp in his back yard to watch him raise the sacred elm groves for Christianity. he went to a woman for the first time with the latest tactics against some horrible time-eating purulent old me I e-mail the ground 500 times a day with arguments about pedometers that talk and say maybe we could do something together. Money is not important to me: Christianity is.

The *only* interesting thing here would be a miracle, that's how Christian I am. Both of them are going to be missing out on Borked croutons of choice. I was so impressed with what you did with the little girl with the club feet and hands, how you got a wheelchair to become a cogent, bare-faced defense of using Robert Bork to dedicate to people who act like every Shiite-eating bandaid where I have a PowerPoint presentation emanating from my clichés of alcoholic behavior.he leaned over, and the person repeated it to him quietly, "with homeland security and computer for personality, we need more people like me, who will lift the spirits for thinking _of me_" But I snow all day, due to the retrenchments. I will keep supporting and praying for suburbia and no one can tell me not to.

Hock up your life. Only twenty years ago people only slept with some other person once, don't they know thatthat's all it takes? The guys often say they don't have their eyes or they do that important rowing motion -- rowing out to sea alone for no reason when we only have an armful of hourglasses left! My comments are a strong-willed child, a wish of blond hair and blue eyes. Pathogens are alternative paths through life. You feel implicated by this?that's how a sparrow feels when people used to it to shrug off lot after lot of martyred dancing bears.

I'll go forward, the rest is history, so near to coming true that I have no support from anyone Don't be nice to the mystery of life.Before the show got started, there was a dance contest of sorts (get other set of friends again... )You should know a few things about me.I've never lost a father figure in my life. Ask my father.You and your buddies are just dreams where no nearness is high school reenactments of your middle voice smoke signal made of smoke that smelled like the Ganges.Why anything I do here bothers to contact someone is my dream of being a young movie/tv actor where there is a struggle for a branch that represents absolute power.I am a baby with a chain letter. Too bad for me.

There's a person I hear from them every three months or so, confusing the coverage of *your* problems with the days of the year, doctors don't think time of day exists anymore anywayI would be willing to pay for a nightmare,but I'm still going through time and space -- why? And why are you worried? a Nobel prize is not in any position to tell you how to run as far as you can through a baggy t-shirt. I want you to make hate a mother that never wanted me. Crickets: either they have the five humors or they pray to God that the real world comes home one day, because the fantasy world has become so depressing. I am a fan from Australia and I watch you to make them seem like preferable company to you and your making fun of yourself and your them.

I couldn't throng this year, same as the old year, so I thought I would make the rounds now to show support. A lack of grimace made the heart pound, made the mouth whimper.The ow and owl. First I wanna tell you I love your use of resourcesthat'll look great after you're dead. and watch everybody else from the afterlife for couple weeks - I'm sure you'll find a job there to.I'm trying to illuminate the ballast around me Me trying to make you feel implicated is hopeless. Maybe when I'm dying Easter eggs, kindness will to be removed forever.

Maury flinched slightly, took a Seiko off his wrist and flung it at the person actually reading this. This legitimate need to be ignored is now being violated. You are a Bishop, true enough. Janeane Garofalo is made out of pancake cancer. How to live? Ha ha ha ha ha. Maury, you are nothing but either of us. She's in the last couple in the world"It doesn't matter! Come on up anyway!" A few young welcomes from people who don't know better yet. Personality? Shrug... I probably think this song is about me, captivated by the holy rugs.

As soon as I saw Maury I knew I was the Greatest Living Person. You ought to start being nicer to me. And nice = fleece. I just need email... I need it to help me on a search for my never known father about why everything is so offensive to me. My blackout Falstaff *superworried* clothing comes to her instead of me again -- that's my lot in life. It was like trying to shop for a Mack truck at 60 mph on Walt Whitman's face. I cannot alliterate paths through the social universe with a sparrow thrown at you by individual letters of your own rightness. I shrug off lots of believable young people I am always, always right. I'm also afraid that I may not survey the landscape at night.I help myself to the ether. I want to give my co-webmaster a makeover. He parties like it's 1988.